Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

Seattle PD Homicide Detectives Nick Winston and Pat Strom are once again on the hunt for a killer in Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned. In this fourth book in the series, the victim is Father Michael Dunne. Who would want to murder the beloved priest? Could the killer be a former lover? A druggie? A sexual abuse victim? The search takes the detectives from Seattle's squalid homeless camps to Tacoma's Catholic sanctuaries in search of the killer.

Kelly Marshall sprinkles her mystery with humor--sometimes dark, often politically incorrect--and the ongoing banter between Winston and Strom provides a respite from the plot's tension. The strong friendship between the detectives shows their human side, too. Marshall kept me wondering whodunit until the story's end.

This book stands alone but once you've read it, you'll like the characters and plot so much you'll want to read all four Winston-Strom mysteries.

Book Beginning:
     Hunched in a pew outside the confessional, Cecilia Armstrong fingered her blue rosary beads as she whispered the well-known words, "Hail Mary, full of grace...." She completed the rosary and opened her eyes. What was taking Father Michael so long with the last penitent? She tried not to judge, but surely someone had confessed mortal sins. Otherwise, why would the priest have to counsel them so long?

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
     "He threatened Dunne on more than one occasion. We don't have a smoking gun yet but give us time. We'll find it because this creep murdered Dunne."

Genre:  Police Mystery
Length:   244 Pages
Amazon Link:   Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned
Author Website:   Kelly Marshall Books

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     A charismatic and popular priest, Father Michael Dunne is brutally stabbed to death in the confessional. The Seattle Catholic Community is stunned and in mourning for a cleric who served not only the people in his parish but many in the Northwest's burgeoning homeless and drug-addicted communities.
     Seattle homicide detectives Nick Winston and Pat Strom find Father Mike face down in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds to his body. Because the attack was so savage, the police surmise the killer knew the pastor. What in his past could account for the highly personal nature of the crime? Was he murdered by a penitent scared that the priest would break the seal of the confessional? Or did an illicit love affair come back to haunt Michael Dunne?
     Everyone loved Father Mike...with one grave exception.

              

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Buffalo Gal - #Friday56 and #Book Beginnings on Fridays

What do a runaway bride and buffalo ranching have in common? And then there are the UFOs! You'll find out in Lisa Wanttaja's delightful romance novel, Buffalo Gal. I enjoyed the way the author made the North Dakota setting a part of the story (torrential rain, tornados), as well as her depiction of the heroine as a strong, independent woman. Lots of humor, too. Good writing.


Book Beginning:
PROLOGUE
Dr. Andrea Moore stared at the clock on her bedroom wall with rising terror. Two more hours and it would all be over. She'd be married.
     She tried to tell herself her nervousness was simply pre-wedding jitters. But she knew it was more than that.


Friday56 from 56% on my Kindle:
"It could be dangerous to stand in the way of our investigation. You don't understand what you're dealing with."

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: 246 Pages
Where to Buy: Links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and More

Synopsis:

     On the morning of her wedding, veterinarian Andrea Moore knows she’s making a mistake. When she learns she’s won a buffalo ranch, she runs off to North Dakota but finds herself in the middle of what could be an even bigger mistake. The ranch she’s won is not only home to a herd of bison but also run by a man who can’t hide his hostility.

     Foreman Mike Winterhawk worked long and hard to buy the ranch himself, only to have it handed over to some contest winner. His focus needs to be on why the bison can’t bear calves instead of teaching this city slicker in ugly green cowboy boots how to run a ranch. He can only hope she’ll quickly realize she’s out of her league and hightail it back to Seattle.

     So, why is he so attracted to this intruder, and why does he feel she might be the one who can help him turn White Thunder Ranch around?


              

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Before We Were Yours - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

I enjoy books where there are two plots going on at the same time. In Before We Were Yours, one of the stories takes place in the late 1930s. The second one is set in present day. Slowly the relationship between the two plot lines is revealed.

Before We Were Yours is a 5-star book, based on a true story, that I won't soon forget.

Beginning:

Prelude
Baltimore, Maryland
August 3, 1939

My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon. The room takes life only in my imaginings. It is large most days when I conjure it. The walls are white and clean, the bed linens crisp as a fallen leaf. The private suite has the very finest of everything. Outside, the breeze is weary, and the cicadas throb in the tall trees, their verdant hiding places just below the window frames. The screens sway inward as the attic fan rattles overhead, pulling at wet air that has no desire to be moved.

56% on my Kindle:
I spin around and bolt for the backyard, but I'm running in sand, the long wrap dress clinging around my legs, my flip-flops slapping. I catch the flash of a blue shirt near my grandmother's palmetto hedge just in time to put on the brakes and act casual coming up the boardwalk.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Family Saga
Pages: 339
Amazon Link:  Before We Were Yours
Copyright 2017

Synopsis:

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

              

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The Marsh King's Daughter - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

    Karen Dionne is a master at leaving "hooks" at the end of each chapter. One time I got to the end of a chapter and the cliffhanger was so intense that I was forced to take a break and stop reading for a while, just to catch my breath. I didn't intend to spend all day reading this book, even though I had a cold and wasn't leaving the house, but I just couldn't stop. If you like novels with unique characters, a strong female protagonist, twists and turns, and plenty of suspense, you'll definitely enjoy this thriller.
    A short fantasy by Hans Christian Andersen, also titled "The Marsh King's Daughter," is the source of the book's title. That story weaves through the book. The opening of Andersen's story forms the prologue of this book. The first actual chapter starts like this:

Book Beginning:

Helena

     If I told you my mother's name, you'd recognize it right away. My mother was famous, though she never wanted to be. Hers wasn't the kind of fame anyone would wish for. Jaycee Dugard, Amanda Berry, Elizabeth Smart - that kind of thing, though my mother was none of them.
     You'd recognize my mother's name if I told it to you, and then you'd wonder - briefly, because the years when people cared about my mother are long gone, as she is - where is she now? And didn't she have a daughter while she was missing? And whatever happened to the little girl?

Friday 56 from 56% on my Kindle:

The ice moved up and down as I walked, like the river was breathing, like it was a living thing and it was offended by this arrogant human girl-child who dared to walk across its frozen surface. I imagined the River Spirit reaching an icy hand up out of the water from one of the many gaps in the ice, grabbing my ankle, and pulling me in. 

Genre: Psychological Suspense
Length: 314 Pages
Amazon Link: The Marsh King's Daughter
I borrowed this ebook from my local library.

Synopsis (from Amazon): 
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too...until she learned precisely how savage he could be.

More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King—because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter.

                             

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Half Broke Horses - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

I've been reading as much as ever lately but haven't been participating in The Friday 56 or Book Beginnnings on Friday in a long time. However, I enjoyed Half Broke Horses so much that I decided to jump back in. This is a novel based on memories from Jeannette Walls's mother, relating to the author's grandmother -- Lily Casey Smith. In the "Author's Note" section, Walls writes: "... since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing... the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel."

Book Beginnings on Friday:

     Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.
     It was late on an August afternoon, the air hot and heavy like it usually was in the rainy season. Earlier we'd seen some thunderheads near the Burnt Spring Hills, but they'd passed way up to the north. I'd mostly finished my chores for the day and was heading down to the pasture with my brother, Buster, and my sister, Helen, to bring the cows in for their milking. But when we got there, those girls were acting all bothered. Instead of milling around at the gate, like they usually did at milking time, they were standing stiff-legged and straight-tailed, twitching their heads around, listening.
     Buster and Helen looked up at me, and without a word, I knelt down and pressed my ear to the hard-packed dirt. There was a rumbling, so faint and low that you felt it more than you heard it. Then I knew what the cows knew -- a flash flood was coming.

     

The Friday 56 (Pages 56 and 156 were both blank, so I chose an excerpt from page 157):

     That well water tasted sweeter than the finest French liqueur. Some folks, when they struck it rich, liked to say that they were in the money, and that was how I felt - rich - only we were in the water.

Genre: Faction (fiction based on fact)

Book Length: 265 Pages (hardback)

Amazon Link: Half Broke Horses

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix audiences everywhere. 
              

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The Secret Wife - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

Love this book! Two separate plots - one beginning in 1914, one in 2016. They come together to create an enchanting book. I learned more about Russian history from this story than I expected and in an entertaining way. The author did a great job of tying everything together. It is definitely worth reading.

Book Beginning:
Lake Akanabee, New York State,
19th July 2016
     It was twenty-nine hours since Kitty Fisher had left her husband and in that time she had travelled 3,713 miles. The in-flight magazine had said there were 3,461 miles between London and New York, and the hire car's Sat Nav told her she had driven 252 miles since leaving the airport. A whole ocean and half a state lay between her and Tom. She should have been upset but instead she felt numb.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
She grasped the letter and hugged it tightly to her chest as she wept like a child, with complete abandon. There was a painful spot deep inside and she hoped the crying jag might shift it but when she clambered up to the cabin and pulled herself into bed fully clothed, it was still there.

Genre: Historical Fiction / Mystery
Book Length: 417 Pages
Amazon Link: The Secret Wife
Author Website: Gill Paul

Synopsis (from Amazon):

A Russian grand duchess and an English journalist. Linked by one of the world’s greatest mysteries . . .

Love. Guilt. Heartbreak.

1914

Russia is on the brink of collapse, and the Romanov family faces a terrifyingly uncertain future. Grand Duchess Tatiana has fallen in love with cavalry officer Dmitri, but events take a catastrophic turn, placing their romance – and their lives – in danger . . .

2016

Kitty Fisher escapes to her great-grandfather’s remote cabin in America, after a devastating revelation makes her flee London. There, on the shores of Lake Akanabee, she discovers the spectacular jewelled pendant that will lead her to a long-buried family secret . . .

Haunting, moving and beautifully written, The Secret Wife effortlessly crosses centuries, as past merges with present in an unforgettable story of love, loss and resilience.

Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Dinah Jefferies.

               

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Still Alice - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

     Written in 2007, STILL ALICE is as relevant today as it was ten years ago. Author Lisa Genova takes her readers into the mind of Dr. Alice Howland, a Harvard professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. The story is an unforgettable look at this devastating disease.

     I saw the movie several years ago (starring Julianne Moore), but the book offers so much more detail. By the way, although the paperback edition of the copy I have was published by Simon & Schuster, the author says in her "A Conversation With Lisa Genova" appendix that she self-published Still Alice because she "... knew it would take years to find a publishing house" and she "...felt an urgent responsibility to get the book out immediately." So many wonderful books start with self-publishing!

Book Beginning:

September 2003

    Alice sat at her desk in their bedroom distracted by the sounds of John racing through each of the rooms on the first floor. She needed to finish her peer review of a paper submitted to the Journal of Cognitive Psychology before her flight, and she'd just read the same sentence three times without comprehending it. It was 7:30 according to their alarm clock, which she guessed was about ten minutes fast. She knew from the approximate time and the escalating volume of his racing that he was trying to leave, but he'd forgotten something and couldn't find it. She tapped her red pen on her bottom lip as she watched the digital numbers on the clock and listened for what she knew was coming.

The Friday 56 (from Page 56):

     "Okay, I'm going to tell you a name and address, and you're going to repeat it back to me. Then, we're going to do some other things, and I'm going to ask you to repeat the same name and address again later. Ready, here it is - John Black, 42 West Street, Brighton. Can you repeat that for me?"

Genre: Medical Fiction / Women's Fiction

Book Length: 292 Pages (plus appendices) - Trade Paperback Edition

Amazon Link: Still Alice

Author Website: Lisa Genova

Synopsis (from the author's website):

She didn’t want to become someone people avoided and feared. She wanted to live to hold Anna’s baby and know it was her grandchild. She wanted to see Lydia act in something she was proud of. She wanted to see Tom fall in love. She wanted to read every book she could before she could no longer read.

Alice Howland is proud of the life she has worked so hard to build. A Harvard professor, she has a successful husband and three grown children. When Alice begins to grow forgetful at first she just dismisses it, but when she gets lost in her own neighborhood she realizes that something is terribly wrong. Alice finds herself in the rapid downward spiral of Alzheimer’s disease. She is only 50 years old.

While Alice once placed her worth and identity in her celebrated and respected academic life, now she must re-evaluate her relationship with her husband, her expectations of her children and her ideas about herself and her place in the world.

Losing her yesterdays, her short-term memory hanging on by a couple of frayed threads, she is living in the moment, living for each day. But she is still Alice.

Still Alice is as compelling as A Beautiful Mind and as powerful as Ordinary People. You will gain an understanding of those affected by early-onset Alzheimer’s and remain moved and inspired long after you have put it down.

                

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The Pecan Man - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

If you enjoyed Driving Miss Daisy, The Help, or the Miss Julia series, then you'll definitely like The Pecan Man. Told in the voice of an 82-year-old woman, the author paints a vivid portrait of life in small-town Florida and the realities of race relations in parts of the South. The story is told with warmth and humor, and the author doesn't preach. 

The Pecan Man is beautifully written and free of grammatical and other errors, which I always appreciate. I'm delighted to feature Cassie Dandridge Selleck and other indie authors on my blog.

Book Beginning:
In the summer of 1976, the year of our Bicentennial, preparations for the Fourth of July were in full force. Flags hung from the eaves of every house along this stretch of Main Street. The neighborhood women were even busier than usual. I watched them come and go from a rocking chair on my own front porch.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
The inside walls were covered with wood paneling. A large brown gas heater burned noisily at one end of the room and a picture of The Last Supper hung wearily over a deep red couch at the other end.

Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Length: 146 Pages
Amazon Link: The Pecan Man 
Author Website/Blog:  Cassie Dandridge Selleck

Read Chapter One from Selleck's latest book What Matters in Mayhew HERE. 

Synopsis from Goodreads:
The Pecan Man is a work of Southern fiction whose first chapter was the First Place winner of the 2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition in the Unpublished Novel category. In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When the police chief's son is found stabbed to death near his camp, the man Ora knows as Eddie is arrested and charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man. In narrating her story, Ora discovers more truth about herself than she could ever have imagined. This novel has been described as To Kill a Mockingbird meets The Help.

                

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The Other Daughter - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

     What if your past was a lie? How far would you go to confront the father who you believe had died but, in reality, had abandoned you and your mother? In The Other Daughter, the main character takes on a new identity and insinuates herself into London society with a goal of exposing her father. But as in so many good stories, things aren't always as they seem.
     I enjoyed this book. I loved the characters, enjoyed a glimpse into the lifestyle of the rich, and adored the descriptions of their clothes. The plot kept me engaged, too. I'll look for more books by this author.
     This is another book I came across at the library.

Genre: Historical Romance
Book Length: 310 Pages (trade paperback)
Amazon Link: The Other Daughter
Author Website: Lauren Willig

Book Beginning:
     "Can we go look, can we go look, can we go look?" Eight-year-old Amelie tugged at Rachel's hand, pulling her toward the stairs.
     "I don't see what the point is of looking at a party you can't go to," said thirteen-year-old Albertine crossly.
     "English, please," said Rachel automatically.
     The girls were meant to speak English when they were with her; the countess had been very clear about that. If it was a rule Rachel enforced somewhat selectively, that, she decided was a matter for her own conscience.

Friday 56 (from page 156 in trade paperback):
It had only been leased, not owned. As, apparently, had her father, and her name, and everything else she had believed to be hers. A feeling of raw panic subsumed her.

Synopsis (from Amazon):

Raised in a poor yet genteel household, Rachel Woodley is working in France as a governess when she receives news that her mother has died, suddenly. Grief-stricken, she returns to the small town in England where she was raised to clear out the cottage... and finds a cutting from a London society magazine, with a photograph of her supposedly deceased father dated all of three months before. He's an earl, respected and influential, and he is standing with another daughter--his legitimate daughter. Which makes Rachel...not legitimate. Everything she thought she knew about herself and her past--even her very name--is a lie.

Still reeling from the death of her mother, and furious at this betrayal, Rachel sets herself up in London under a new identity. There she insinuates herself into the party-going crowd of Bright Young Things, with a steely determination to unveil her father's perfidy and bring his--and her half-sister's--charmed world crashing down. Very soon, however, Rachel faces two unexpected snags: she finds she genuinely likes her half-sister, Olivia, whose situation isn't as simple as it appears; and she might just be falling for her sister's fiancé...

           

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An Innocent Client - The #Friday56 and #BookBeginnings on Friday

An Innocent Client is the first book in Scott Pratt's eight-book Joe Dillard Series, and I'm sure glad there are more for me to read. Joe Dillard is a likable character, the plot moves along briskly (with plenty of twists and turns), and the ending is satisfying. Joe has plenty of professional and personal obstacles to overcome (nobody seems to like a lawyer who defends criminals), and the action kept me turning pages. I'm looking forward to getting to know this character even better in future books.

FYI: Scott Pratt and his son publish Scott's books through a corporation they formed - Phoenix Flying, Inc. This book is beautifully formatted and free of errors, which I always appreciate.

Genre: Legal Mystery
Book Length: 372 Pages
Amazon Link: An Innocent Client
Author Website/Blog: Scott Pratt

Book Beginning:
April 12 - 7:00 A.M.
     It was my fortieth birthday, and the first thing I had to do was deal with Johnny Wayne Neal. The forensic psychiatrist I'd hired to examine him said Johnny Wayne was a narcissist, a pathological liar, and a sociopath, and those were his good qualities. He called Johnny Wayne an "irredeemable monster." I'd asked the shrink not to write any of that down. I didn't want the district attorney to see it. Monster or not, Johnny Wayne was still my client.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
     "I don't see how she could possibly have killed Tester," I said. "For one thing, he was a 260-pound man. What does she weigh? 110?"

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
     A preacher is found brutally murdered in a Tennessee motel room.
     A beautiful, mysterious young girl is accused.
     In this Mystery Readers International finalist for "Best Debut Mystery," criminal defense lawyer Joe Dillard has become jaded over the years as he's tried to balance his career against his conscience. Savvy but cynical, Dillard wants to quit doing criminal defense, but he can't resist the chance to represent someone who might actually be innocent. His drug-addicted sister has just been released from prison and his mother is succumbing to Alzheimer's, but Dillard's commitment to the case never wavers despite the personal troubles and professional demands that threaten to destroy him. 
              

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A. J. Fikry - The #Friday56 and #BookBeginnings on Friday

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry was such a pleasant surprise! I fell in love with the characters and, in fact, the whole town. This is a delightfully entertaining and warm-hearted story.

Genre: Contemporary / Family Life
Book Length: 290 Pages
Amazon Link: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry
Author Website: Gabrielle Zevin

Book Beginning:
(NOTE: Every chapter begins with the title of a book, along with notes from A. J. Fikry. I'm skipping the notes and posting the opening of Chapter One here.)
     On the ferry from Hyannis to Alice Island, Amelia Loman paints her nails yellow and, while waiting for them to dry, skims her predecessor's notes. "Island Books, approximately $250,000.00 per annum in sales, the better portion of that in the summer months to folks on holiday," Harvey Rhodes reports. "Seven hundred square feet of selling space. No full-time employees other than the owner. Very small children's section. Fledgling online presence. Poor community outreach. Inventory emphasizes the literary, which is good for us, but Fikry's tastes are very specific, and without Nic, he can't be counted on to hand-sell. Luckily for him, Island's the only game in town." Amelia yawns - she's nursing a slight hangover - and wonders if one persnickety little bookstore will be worth such a long trip. By the time her nails have hardened, her relentlessly bright-sided nature has kicked in: Of course it's worth it! Her specialty is persnickety little bookstores and the particular breed that runs them. Her talents also include multitasking, selecting the right wine at dinner (and the coordinating skill, tending friends who've had too much to drink), houseplants, strays, and other lost causes.

The Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
     "A long time ago, a girl wrote a novel, and she tried to sell it, but no one wanted it. It was about an old man who lost his wife, and it didn't have supernatural beings in it or a high concept to speak of, and so she thought it would be easier if she retitled the book and called it a memoir."

Synopsis:
A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. He lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival gives Fikry the chance to make his life over--and see everything anew.                 

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